Patrick D. McCaslin Interview, 25 February 2001
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51
| you're flying missions and planning it was pretty much on a name basis with everybody on the crew. | ||
| INT: | You guys were just dependent on each other. | |
| PM: | You have to be tight, yeah, or it's not a crew. | |
| INT: | Yeah. So, and you flew this crew for how long prior to '68 say— | |
| PM: | Boy I, you know, I don't remember exactly. | |
| INT: | More or less than a year? | |
| PM: | Yeah, I think it was less than a year. | |
| INT: | Oh, okay. And, just give us a brief overview of your position in the plane. | |
| PM: | Okay. The B-52 was set up with the AC. If the nose of the airplane is this direction, the AC sat over here upstairs [left seat], the co-pilot sat here [right seat]. | |
| INT: | Right. | |
| PM: | And also upstairs and behind them you had the EW facing this direction [backwards], the Gunner here facing this direction [backwards]. | |
| INT: | Okay. Same level. | |
| PM: | Same level. Below, roughly, maybe slightly forward of the EW and Gunner, but on the deck below, you had the navigator on this side—the same side as the co-pilot, and a radar navigator on the left side. There were 2 ejection seats. And there was just space for one person to go in-between the seats, get in his seat, and the next per—you couldn't—there wasn't enough for both people. Unless you were really thin, I don't know how you'd get through there. And I wasn't. | |
| INT: | So, would you go down a ladder? | |
| PM: | Yeah. | |
| INT: | Okay. So down in the back of that hallway there was a ladder going down, or steps into— | |
| PM: | There was a hatch, like a trap door. It was halfway between the location of the pilot's and the EW and the Gunner and see, there was a ladder that |
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